{"id":1660,"date":"2026-05-14T05:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/a-beauty-ideal-of-extreme-thinness-is-the-opposite-of-longevity\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T05:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:09:20","slug":"a-beauty-ideal-of-extreme-thinness-is-the-opposite-of-longevity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/a-beauty-ideal-of-extreme-thinness-is-the-opposite-of-longevity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beauty Ideal of Extreme Thinness Is the Opposite of \u201cLongevity\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On a recent random scroll through Instagram traffic, I slammed to a sudden stop at a video clip of Demi Moore at an event several weeks ago, looking frighteningly skeletal. I sat for a moment, stunned by the image before I noticed the lead comment, honking something like, \u201cDemi Moore, aging like a fine wine\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>First, women are not wine\u2014or donuts, or strawberries, or vaginas (at least not only vaginas), as we are often referred to in marketing of all kinds, but especially beauty marketing. And though I understand the metaphor about improving with age, this one sours pretty quickly when you consider that even a fine wine at some point will turn to vinegar (in general, the point at which a woman is no longer perceived as reproductively viable). Moore, at 63, presents as a much younger woman. I suppose this is what precipitated the comment suggesting that she is aging well. But aging well is not about looking younger. It\u2019s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy. And there seems to be some confusion about that.<\/p>\n<p>The ramifications of an unhealthily low BMI (as a rule, under 18.5) are legion and unpleasant, especially if you\u2019d prefer not to die early: It\u2019s associated with an increased risk of mortality, one that\u2019s significantly more than in a woman with what&#8217;s considered a normal BMI. It\u2019s also associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer\u2019s disease and dementia. That\u2019s the really bad news.<\/p>\n<aside aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"PullQuoteEmbedWrapper-sc-efqGLV dUzuPW\" data-testid=\"pullquote-embed-center\">\n<div class=\"PullQuoteEmbedContent-sc-fzpWpD HaRcE\">\n<p>Aging well is not about looking younger. It\u2019s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The run-of-the-mill bad news is that underweight women often suffer from reduced muscle mass (sarcopenia), which older people in general are prone to, and low bone density\u2014another perimenopause\/menopause pitfall best avoided, as it increases the risk of fractures. Might you be concerned about your aging skin? Excessively thin women are prone to chronic skin fragility and skin tears (dermatoporosis). And that\u2019s in addition to the normal age-related increased skin fragility that often results in bruising.<\/p>\n<p>And while we\u2019re on the topic of skin, you might have noticed that faces\u2014even the faces of young women\u2014when they\u2019re extremely thin, emphasize characteristics caused by age, among them sunken eyes and cheeks.<\/p>\n<p>The point is that women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, if we want to age well, need to be aiming for the opposite of the image that Moore and many of her Hollywood peers present. We need to be thinking about ways to increase physical strength, focusing on healthy nutrition, building bone density and muscle mass, and maintaining both physical and mental agility. In our later 70s and 80s, there may come a time when we experience unintended weight loss and consequential frailty that could limit our movement. All the more reason to keep our bodies as robust as possible while we can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a recent random scroll through Instagram traffic, I slammed to a sudden stop at a video clip of Demi Moore at an event several weeks ago, looking frighteningly skeletal. I sat for a moment, stunned by the image before I noticed the lead comment, honking something like, \u201cDemi Moore, aging like a fine wine\u2026\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}